Monday, October 31, 2016

Something
characteristic and peculiar only of human people is they can think and express and utter the
ideas they have. In other words they can communicate with one another, they can
speak with other people.

And that precise principle must be carried out in our
classrooms: we have to make our students think and express their ideas, their
findings, their problems, their joys, and we will try to help them out.

It is
convenient we teachers should carry out conversations in the second or foreign
language, if we’re language teachers, which is my case, as you well know. It’s
convenient we in classes should talk in English, our dear target language.

So
we will practice conversations, turn-taking, presenting some point or thought
or idea. At the beginnings our students will not be able to participate in a
conversation or dialogue, but we teachers will assist them to participate in those
nice conversations.

It is also convenient our dear students would not only
answer questions, but they should learn how to present a topic or point of
interest, or just to take part in those marvelous conversations. Thus we will
achieve a human and humane goal: to set communication among people, among
persons.

We should foster everyone could intervene and contribute to the
conversation, and we also will make everyone would participate, each one with
his uniqueness.

You want a clue to make them all participate or facilitate this
communication? Look in your students’ eyes, maybe saying their names, and
you’ll be inviting them to communication. Another clue? Ask them questions
about the discussion topic, easy ones and cleverer ones too. All this nice activity can
be implemented with children, teenagers and adults. I have very nice experiences! / Photo from: teacher-assisting-student-at-chalkboard
www wisegeek org

Saturday, October 29, 2016

When our students are
honest and think correctly, or they’re adults, if there’s some lack of
discipline and they for example talk when their teacher’s talking, we can gain
their discipline by talking about their chatting, about that precise bad habit,
and so we’ll make them think.

We can ask them what they think is better, as I said,
when their teacher’s speaking. Sometimes the habit of keeping quiet demands a
repetition of actions. That repetition of actions create a habit. A habit is
gained and acquired when the students repeat actions.

The teacher has to
respect his students, and that’s fine, but our students have also to learn to
respect their teacher. In this process of acquiring politeness the repetition of
actions shows they’re of a paramount importance.

The students have to learn to
respect adults and as well for instance when they’re in the subway or a bus and
there’s a venerable old person they have to offer their seat to that person.

They
are politeness habits that are basic and everybody should learn to keep. It’s
something we can appreciate a great deal. Another example is for a technician,
when he comes to our house to fix something, we would appreciate he be polite,
wouldn’t we? / Photo from: Autumn-September 2014-Ontario www plus google com.
the picture’s just an illustration

Friday, October 28, 2016

We have to
conduct according to our dignity, and we teachers have to treat our students
according to their dignity, don't we?

And this common dignity is not less than we are
children of God. And we can treat Him with the tenderness we treat or treated
our dad and mom, because He loves us with the love all dads and moms in the
world can love their children.

And all this prayer permeates our daily work,
and the activities and routines we carry out.

It is good for us to know we
aren’t alone in this world but we have Someone that takes care of us! A person
with this knowledge can endure daily dire straits and minor pains better.

Think
of the sorrows many people are having: earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, diseases…
We have to learn about these disasters, because they’re our brothers and sisters.

Also we
can celebrate our joys with Someone else.

There was a teacher, quite many years
ago, who was suffering in a classroom with rather naughty students; well then
he at once remembered also he had a mom in Heaven taking care of him: Saint
Mary. That helped him quite a lot! And as I said we can have these helps at our
daily teaching, and as well at our treating our students and our colleagues
too! / Photo from: Rays-Fire-Station-Wish-238-PR Rays of Sunshine London
fireman squad. As I said we are children of God at daily work, like the one
firefighters may have to fulfill.

We teachers don’t just teach math or English but also educate
our dear students.

I saw that statement some few days ago in a book
magazine-catalog-newsletter, and it sounded okay with me. In English it would
read something like “A person’s uniqueness brings about and implies to help him
or her be aware of his or her strong points and limitations alike: education is
to help know yourself and so to help accept yourself as you are.”

If a person
accepts the way he or she is, that person more likely will be able to be happy.

And we teachers here can do and make a lot. This personalization has to be so,
person by person, and we ought to have individual tutoring sessions at school,
with each and every student, better if male teachers help boys and female
teachers assist girls.

We teachers have to contribute to foster and boost our
students’ personality, I mean the good things they have, which can be many and
very positive ones. But all this according to their parents, so we should also
have tutoring sessions with them, as frequent as possible, maybe every month or
every two months! / Photo from: fall rainy day www pinterest com. the picture
is a nice illustration for the blog

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

With my adult students
we work out worksheets I hand out to them. And we take good advantage of them
indeed!

I read them out, then they do so, I present the words they don’t understand,
and which ones are new to them. Other exercises and activities we carry out are
saying the meaning of words in English, or the other way round: I say the
meanings and they give me the words, after we’ve read the worksheet several
times and they have a clear scheme of that worksheet.

Also they summarize the worksheet
and now yes, they translate Spanish expressions into English ones from the
worksheet, so I ask them “How would you say… in English?”

The point is for my
students to get a nice communicative competence. And this school year as well I’m
presenting grammar points, also for a communicative purpose: they learn and/or
revise ways of saying everyday things in English.

The classes, as you know are
in English, tending to 99% in that marvelous language. The class-group should
be small, say 8 to 11 students each class-group. 11 students is rather much,
and 8 or so students is a nice number, for they can participate and contribute
more often. The minimum number for nice communication in English would be 6
students.

I also teach them collateral lexis to the words of the topic the
worksheets are about. In few words we work from worksheets I compose or texts
from different books I copy. And remember the goal: communication,
communication, communication. If you want to learn more about my classes, let
me know. / Photo from: Dad-and-Daughter. A fantastic photo shot

Monday, October 24, 2016

We language teachers
can teach for example general English, and that’s ok, but we may have to teach
ESP, this is English for Special Purposes, which demands a lot from us teachers,
because we’ve got to recycle our English and learn how to say many things in a
sort of variety of English: business English, science English, etc.

But the
result is magnificent: we make possible to set communication among people from
all over the world. We English language teachers build bridges among people,
and what was an obstacle, English, becomes a bridge for communication between
people, isn’t it great?

This also happens with Spanish: many people from America
and from Europe, namely Spain can communicate in that marvelous language. We in
our center have a new teacher from Chile and we teachers can talk with her in
Spanish.

The human person only grows well if he’s in contact with other people,
because man and woman only develop their potentials when living in a
society, I mean with other people.

And the person is destined to love, with
benevolence love.

So we already have that people have to live and work
together, and they have been created for love of benevolence toward others. Love
of benevolence is to wish what is good for other people.

Persons only develop
their potentialities when living inside otherness.

And another consequence of
this social contact and communication learned and acquired in school classes is
that companies and corporations will be able to get in contact from different
countries.

Think of another example of communication, which is so prominent
here in Granada: tourism. Another example of communication we language teachers
facilitate is academic relationships among students from different countries. All
those communications are awesome and gratifying, no doubt about that.

So as to
finish I will cite another example of the need to learn English and/or Spanish: globalization.
Just think of it, because you know a lot about it! / Photo from: planting-tree
una pagina un minuto wordpress com. The picture shows an example of
communication, a nice one, between a grandfather and his grandson.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

So I have
written about immersion in English, the target language, and also about
acquisition and not mere learning, this is, in other words: our students learn
English, but as well they are acquiring it, in some way the same as infant
children do when they learn their mother language.

However I’m presenting
grammar points in my old students’ classes. Is that opposite and contrary to the
valuable unaware acquisition?

Well think this way: grammar presentation – and grammar
elicitation from my students – boosts communication in the classroom and out of
the classroom, because this grammar gives them the tools and instruments for
later communication in the classroom, both with me their teacher and with their
classmates.

Moreover my students like to have this grammar presentation
at classes: also because they can contribute with the knowledge they already
have – they’re adults and have studied about all this. Alike I will present
some grammar points they have never studied yet, because they pertain to a
level of English which is higher than the one they have now.

Thus I would
advise you to present grammar points in the classroom, if possible in the
target language but if they do not understand you, then try in their mother
language. / Photo from: MIT libraries. The picture is just an illustration for
the post.

Something else I’d like to add is that I beg my students’ pardon if I inflicted
some humiliation or the kind in classes during my first years as a teacher because
I had scolded a student in public too much. I wouldn’t do same way now. I also
regret from any faults I might have committed during those my first years of
teaching.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Sometimes at
classes when I realize I’m speaking in Spanish, our common native language I shift
into English again, because I intend to create a nice atmosphere where English
is the vehicle for discussions and communication in general.

Today one of my
students took his turn and spoke in English for a lot, about two texts from a
worksheet I’ve handed them out, number 195 already.

It has two texts, one about
family relations and another one about the rise of the bicycle in the 1890s. Two
very interesting texts, with a nice number of points for discussion. One is B1
and the second is C1, to provide material both for low-achievers and high-achievers
too.

So when I am aware I’m speaking in Spanish I beg their pardon and change
back into English, our target language.

If I produce a lot of output in that language
I give my students chances and opportunities of acquiring English and not only
learning it.

And all that with a smile, maybe a small laugh and a bit of sense
of humor, good things for the lubricating of the class.

The point, remember is
to create immersion into English, and it turns out fine. Awesome, I mean from
my students. At present I teach adults but I hope I will teach kids pretty soon
as well. / Photo from: Steps-To-Fly-A-Kite-With-Your-Kid. The photo is just a
nice illustration, isn’t it?

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

I’ve already written
about the “flipped classroom”, and you may know about that new interesting way
of learning.

Instead of the traditional way of teacher teaching and presenting
the contents of classes, the students would get the information from the
Internet, encyclopedias, books, surroundings and thereabouts, from people that
know about the specific contents, etc.

Is then the teacher an unimportant
person? Not at all! The teacher could filter the information that is meaningful,
really interesting and relevant. Also he would lead up the way to the
convenient sources and would in some way help find the best contents for the
unit or topic.

The teacher keeps being of a paramount importance! He also provides a critical eye: he can tell about the relevance or not of some specific
sources.

The class is then a working group or team, together with their
dear teacher. This latter one can set the student working teams or they all can
discuss in the classroom how to make up the groups. Then the teacher would act
as a moderator – otherwise the class students could be discussing about how to make
up the teams for a never ending long time.

As well the teacher would organize
and run the group turns: when the different teams would present their topic and
material. I guess it’s an interesting way of learning but I’d like to have more
feedback from real classes which are working that way. You may have heard of
this learning style and have more knowledge than me, or even can be working
that way! / Photo from: charles chaplin in love with blind girl City Lights
1931 movie. Could a single film be an interesting topic or theme to investigate
about? Think of it! Maybe something more ample and broad?

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

For some people
in Spain English is an obstacle for communication with other people, although
more and more people are learning English now.

So it’s an obstacle to connect
with other people; well then, for us English language teachers and for our
students it is a bridge! And this is more and more, according they are progressing
in their communicative competence of that language.

In our classrooms English
is a link between students and the teacher and among students. The more they
acquire and learn this communicative competence the more we can make up an
atmosphere where that language is a vehicle for communication, both at the
school subjects of English and maybe at another school subject like history,
science…

Many people here can’t read a novel in English, but our students are
winning that capability and skill. Let’s allow them read and enjoy the
marvelous stories novels can show. Let’s not be so boring so as to work out the
reading activity that much: enjoying the story can be better than too much focusing
on grammar, vocabulary, specific lexis, error and mistake correction.

Let’s
give our students the instruments to understand and enjoy reading those
stories. Classics, for example in abridged and simplified versions can open a
very educative scenario of human values and virtues: courage, endurance, love,
generosity, sincerity, friendship, patriotism, working hard, order. / Photo
from: car53. The photo shows a real WWI ambulance. Some stories can take place
at a warfare scenario.

Monday, October 17, 2016

When I was making
part of my doctoral dissertation some years ago I came across one topic which was students’
anxiety – I didn’t finish my doctoral dissertation but I wrote a book on its
topic: Success at teaching English as a foreign language, and that theme in
some way has been developed along this blog.

Students may suffer anxiety.

However
during my first years at teaching young students I didn’t find any anxiety case
or there was not much anxiety among them, my students: they were okay at my
classes, and at other teachers’ classes too.

Before I forget it I would advise
you not to shout at your students: they can get so scared. Some, little very
little shouting can be okay at certain moments, even it can be something
educative, but very very very little shouting.

What I did find among some students
was a bit of bullying, but thank God at our school we had tutoring sessions
with our students and they could give vents to their sorrows and pains, and
joys too!

Sometimes letting other people learn about our joys is pretty
necessary!

I could write on bullying on another day.

Something else I could now
tell you: when coming from today’s classes I thought that we teachers could let
get ourselves influenced by our students’ chatting in the class, and we
teachers could teach among noises.

I’ve told you about class management for
long, and now I would tell you just to get silent when your students are
talking among them: sometimes it’s okay with just staring at them, and they
will start to be quiet because of your silence and waiting for you to go on –
silence may be so eloquent! / Photo from: 2016 www formula1 com. The picture is
just a nice illustration but I have comrades and students that like Formula 1
so much.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

When you teach
English to grown-ups, you may realize that you have to also talk with them for
instance to check out whether they can understand you in classes.

And you can
do this in English too, at a basic and easy-to-understand level, because there might be (likely so!)
different levels of English and different grades of achievement.

But if you
discern that you need to speak in Spanish (their mother language) about this point
you may speak in this their mother language, in a discussion mode, and collaborative
too!

With adults you have to conduct in another way than from kids, evidently!

Although
they’re adults likely they’ll put themselves in your hands, and they, well,
some of them, will accept whatever you tell them: they will be content with
whatever you do in classes. Let’s be honest and morally correct: let’s give
them a lot, and avoid giving them less than they deserve. They deserve good and
very professional classes, ones taught with a lot of professionalism.

Not all these
students will feel content with whatever you do at classes: some of them in
some way can be very critical and questioning. The point here is listening to
them and more now than ever before try to do your best, and from time to time you
all in class can discuss about how things are going – some or many or most of
them are very collaborative and friendly!

And always, and remember this point, we teachers,
with grown-ups, have to be affective and concerned about themselves. Summing up,
be prone to listen to their needs and expectations and wishes, concerning
classes. Just one more point: plan your lessons – they will appreciate your
commitment in a great way! They just are great! / Photo from: boeing 777
wallpaper zone. As you all know, pilots work with a great deal of
professionalism.

Friday, October 14, 2016

I’ve seen that
committed teachers plan their lessons with their actual and real students in
mind!

The ideal point would be for us teachers to plan lessons, and to plan
lessons with our specific students in mind.

The list of students should be
worked out quite much by us teachers. In that way we would plan lessons which
match our students’ needs plus expectations.

I’m now thinking of my English
language students: when planning my lessons I should bear in mind that some can
understand more English than others. Also in that way I will plan activities
that match my students’ level of English; even more, I think I will have to
plan activities of different difficulty grade according to the real students I
have in our classroom.

Or at least I will implement activities at different
levels in the classroom: I can demand more from some students and I can demand
less from some other students.

An example could clear up the point: today I
asked them to say the meaning of some words in English by using a couple of
words I gave them beforehand. I remind you that some of my students are adults,
and now I’m referring to them and their classes.

Well so I asked a student to
carry out that activity but he could use any words he could think of, and not
necessarily the ones I gave him: this student has a lower level of English and
I can’t demand from him the same as other students. His communicative
competence is lesser and smaller than others’, and in order to achieve a nice
communicative competence he can use the resources he has at hand, which are
different from other students’ ones. / Photo from: facts-about-ducks www
thefactsite com. The picture is just a nice illustration.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

So we’ve seen that in
our English-language classes we should have immersion, and an atmosphere of
immersion and communication in English, our target language, even right before
the class, when you arrive at the classroom.

So immersion, okay… but they, the
students should understand us teachers… How!? Explain well: utilize the
whiteboard or chalkboard or smartboard,

give your students examples of what you’re
teaching and saying,

get feedback from them,

ask them,

get feedback from facial
expressions, so as to check out if they’re understanding you,

speak clearly,

stop to clear up doubts and questions,

use graphic material,

project material
on the wall from your computer,

speak clearly,

vocalize,

use cognates or
similar words both in L1 and the target language,

use drawings or diagrams,

one
student can explain what we’re saying in his own words,

ask them if they have
any question, etc. Make sure they can follow you, maybe not all but a sensible and
sound quantity from your speech. So remember to get feedback from your
students! I’m writing about grown-up students but the same, even more, in the
case of kids could be said! / Photo from: african-children-playing-football www
artsmarthauxcombat com. The picture is just an illustration.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

A great idea may be
to have a school magazine. And it is so motivating for the students to
collaborate with contributions in the languages they’re learning, for instance
English, French and German.

And you teacher can correct very few errors or
mistakes, so as to publish articles they actually composed. All this is very
motivating, because the students obviously like to have their articles or
contributions published. The students could send you their articles,
just-for-fun jokes, curiosities, insights, science articles, sports like the
school soccer league, pastimes, etc.

Some of the school parents can contribute
to the expenses of the issuing by means of their corporation ads.

I’ve carried
out this activity with other teachers in my previous school and I can assure
you it’s a grand thing.

Even we could use the magazine for class activities,
starting with just reading and saying the errors and mistakes they can see out
loud. Over time they, the students, become more and more eager to participate,
and maybe you’ll have to make a selection of contributions, or even a group of
them could make the selection!

Talk with other teachers to carry out this
enterprise, and try to publish for example three times a school year, or more… It
is a very positive activity and the students can see that what they’re learning
is meaningful and useful, so they’ll try to learn more, and they’ll learn from
their own errors and mistakes. Just start, together with another teacher: the
main thing is to get started! / Photo from: tour de france 2011 stage 15 www
cyclingweekly co uk. The students can write about current news.

Monday, October 10, 2016

I told them I’m going to teach
them grammar also, which I will present in their and my own mother language,
Spanish, as you may know.

Why grammar, if my methodology is communicative? You
may ask me. Well, they need grammar, because it is like the skeleton of
language, so also it is okay with communication amongst us.

Scholar Susana Pastor
Cesteros convinced me that that presentation of grammar can mean a booster for
later communication.

I’m giving you an example. Okay, you can row in a boat,
but if you have sails and can count on winds, much better, right? We may have communication,
but if they can use grammar learning, they can advance faster. Grammar presentation
is like winds: my students can go faster.

Definitely I will present some
grammar. As well some of my grown-ups demand rigor, and grammar can provide
that rigor to our classes. This grammar presentation makes classes different
from other past years, when I focused only on communication.

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Oral presentations by
students is an interesting activity, because they have to speak for longer than
just when answering questions we teachers might ask them.

They have to talk about
a topic and not only reply a question by their teacher. We can advise them how
to work out this activity, what steps they can follow. First they can produce a
brainstorm of possible themes, and then choose one by eliminating the rest. After
that they can write two columns: one with the things they can talk about in
English, their target language, and one for the things they cannot talk about
in that language. They can receive help and assistance by the teacher regarding
these latter points, or from one another.

Later they can write about all those
points, with the help of the Internet for getting information about their
topics, if necessary. When they’ve written and developed all those points by
writing about them they have a span of time assigned to each student in order
to talk about their choice topic.

We can carry out this interesting activity
three times a school year. So they could have to talk about, say, for three
minutes, six minutes, ten minutes each time of the school year.

When having to
present a topic the students have to develop different strategies and skills
than when only having to answer a question or prompt from us their teachers.

As
well they have the chance of speaking about topics they like and they may know
quite a lot about: they can be experts at those themes!

I’ve implemented this
exercise also with my grown-up students and I can just say it’s a really
interesting activity, though for some students all this could mean an extra
effort, because they can be shy and they even could experience some anxiety –
another day I could talk about students’ anxiety.

They mature their learning
styles in a significant way.

Their classmates can ask them questions after the actual
presentations or otherwise the presenters can ask their classmates, who had
been listening presumably.

I’ve had nice experiences about this point: for
example once two high-achiever students aged fourteen presented a topic
together for a whole class-time, this is, one hour or fifty minutes!

The students
should know when they will have to present their topics beforehand, with some
days of time and according to the group-class list of students. Obviously if
they wish they can make up a poster about their topic and the best ones can
decorate the classroom for a period of time. I’ve learned about this
significant activity from Mrs. Mary Jane Amaya, our foreign-language school adviser.
/ Photo from: www planwallpaper com

Friday, October 7, 2016

I’ve told you
that we can learn English (the target language), and also we can acquire it;
let’s say, learn it in an unaware way, like infants do.

Okay, then I can tell
you that when we are reading a novel massively, page after page we can be
acquiring the language in an aware way: we acquire the words, idioms, ways of
saying things in English. It has happened to me, and may happen to anybody!

And
those words and expressions will come up inadvertently whenever we need them to
express our ideas. As well we can be acquiring English when we are listening
massively to music, to speaking by native speakers, watching a DVD, listening to a
website, etc. And all that although we may be adults.

At that time, at those
moments we’re learning as infants do, or at least in a similar way.

All this
about learning and acquiring a language, like English, is a nice thing: always
learning and acquiring a language is something beautiful, and you’ll like it
more and more!

And all that learning and acquiring will lead you to be able to
communicate with other people, and it will connect people to one another! /
Photo from: russell-westbrook-2016-nba-all-star-game www marketingdelosdeportes
com. the picture is just a nice illustration

Thursday, October 6, 2016

We teachers teach our
students, and we should present our school subject contents, okay.

But remember
also that we teach our dear students for them to learn how to learn: our
students would learn how to learn, how to become autonomous learners, how to
wish to learn!

There’s a teaching methodology, which is called flipped
classroom. You may have heard about it. Our students would search for the
contents of our school subject – science, English, math, physical education, Christian
roots of Western society, etc. – and also for the different topics or units of
our syllabus.

Okay then. The students, on the next step, would present their
results before the rest of their classmates, and these ones would learn from
them.

However let’s remember we teachers, in my opinion, and I’ve been a
teacher for a nice number of years, also should present topics ourselves, for
example a grammar point, like the usage of present perfect in order to convey
our experiences, in English, the target language.

These grammar points, as
explained in the students’ mother language (Spanish) oughtn’t to take a lot of
the time allotted to our school subject: I propose there should be a lot of
immersion into English. The methodology I postulate is communication,
communication, communication. Tomorrow I hope to tell you about massive
reading in English and acquisition! / Photo from: PerthDiamondJubilee www
cittaslow org uk. The picture is just a nice illustration.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

I don’t know
about you but I prefer to plan lessons at some peaceful moment I may have.

I
don’t know if you plan your classes at all – maybe you did so at the beginning
of your career, but since all I see in TeacherLingo’s website you all prefer to
have nice material and lesson plans, right? That’s fine. What I wanted to say
today is that planning lessons seems sound, and we can’t expect an ideal moment
to plan those classes, as you can reckon.

Sometimes, along all history, great
books have been written at unpleasant situations, like on the hump of a camel
while riding. It’s true that many grand books of humankind’s history have been
written at peaceful and inspiring places, but we teachers will have to take
advantage of any more or less easy time we may have to then plan our lessons.

Planning lessons can also be carried out, let’s say, from ample view angles,
like while walking, and as I said, then thinking from a wider or more ample
view: What can I expect from kids that age? What can they bear as fruits
according to my teaching style and their learning styles? What ideals can they
have, as young people they are?

Remember youngsters are prone to have ideals.
Otherwise you may think about their thirst for the genuine – the way they dress
for instance, coming to the head of the matter, shows their desire for what’s
genuine: they wish to dress different from their parents and adults in general,
don’t they?

So as to finish, and also about lesson planning, remember what I
said yesterday, about the thing of keeping a diary: we can try to scribble or
write down ideas that come to mind about activities which would match our
students’ way of being or activities that just would be interesting to
implement for them, for the specific students we have opposite us in the
classroom. / Photo from: bicycletimesmag com. The picture is just a nice
illustration, but it might be showing a teen, like our students.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Something that can be
useful for us teachers is to keep a diary, yes you’ve read well.

Not only will
we write dates and events, but also we could write about teaching insights, for
later moments to go back to the diary to refresh those nice ideas.

Also learners
can find helpful to write a diary, but here on this post I wanted to focus on
us teachers and educators.

So we can write ideas we can have about teaching,
other teachers’ insights and ideas, things that happen, topics for presenting to
our students, exams dates, even bright ideas from wise people. Some other times
you can write down ideas which come to mind or things you listen to at a
lecture, or from teachers’ blogs and websites.

Thus to have a sheet of paper or
a diary at hand can prove to be a clever idea. Most of the ideas I write in
this blog have appeared on my own diary; otherwise I couldn’t have written so
much so far. / Photo from: www stocksy com. The picture today is just a nice
illustration

Monday, October 3, 2016

Today I implemented
the placement test for our new adult students, for me to find out about their
level of English, and place them into the corresponding group-class. Also there
were veteran adult students for whom I wanted to assess their level after the
long summer break.

What I intend to explain and remark here on this post is
that the main point about the exam was that I wanted to assess their
communicative writing competence. I suppose that we foreign-language teachers should
foster and boost and enhance our students’ communicative competence, because we
teach English for communication sake: these marvelous grown-ups are used to
traveling and at those trips they have got to use English to “survive” in
different countries where their English will be very convenient and necessary
indeed.

Well, I set the test today and this evening I will have to have a look
at their test sheets. This school year I set three exercises within the test:
one about vocabulary – both easy and advanced level lexis –, one exercise where
they had got to use one word from that first exercise, by writing a sentence
with it, plus a final exercise where they had got to write about their city,
namely Granada, in approximately 100 words, by telling whatever they wanted to
say about that city, where we live.

Most of the students I guess have written
about Granada’s beautiful monuments and landscape.

As I said the main point was
to set communication between them and me. So as to finish I shall say that also
the main point with this test is to place our students into three levels: false
beginners, intermediates and advanced.

When you read those tests, typically you
easily find out whether the students have one of those three levels. Tests
should provide one more chance to establish communication! / Photo from: Alhambra-de-Granada.
This is Alhambra palace, one of the inspiring monuments of Granada, the city
where we live.

Saturday, October 1, 2016

I was thinking
to tell you that the class contents should be meaningful and significant for
our students.

Oh, yes, you could say, but I’ve got scheduled stuff and a
syllabus to cover and teach. Well, I would tell you, try the examples and
contents of that verbal tense you’ve got to teach be meaningful and significant
and relevant for the kids, this is, we should teach and give examples related
to their persons as unique ones.

For example I’ve got to teach present perfect
of English. Well, okay, let's give them examples with their own proper names and
things they have ever done and connected with their worries and growing-up
process, even with stuff related to class concerns: exams and tests, safety in
case of a terrorist attack inside the school, a fire in the school, their
school subjects, their family relatives, going to McDonalds burger place for dinner,
a day spent at the fun fair, their expectations for this school year, their
future jobs, taking care of pets at home, chores, etc., each school would have
its own regular topics. Think of them please.

They should be respectful topics,
proper and adequate to their being human persons. Also some transcendent
topics, like for instance everyone’s thirst for happiness and God. / Photo
from: moto_gp_francia computerhoy com. They may like GP motorcycle races, or
even we could take advantage of their nation history: Spain’s recent history,
USA, Europe, Christian roots of Western Society…